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Jan. 26, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
22:32
Larry Johnson : Does Trump Understand Russia?
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Monday, January 27th, 2025.
Larry Johnson will be here with us in just a moment on Does Donald Trump Understand Russia?
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Larry Johnson, welcome here, my dear friend.
I do want to spend some time exploring your thoughts and all your research on President Trump and what appear to be his profound public misunderstandings of Russia.
But before we do that, I'm going to play a clip of the president in Air Force One yesterday.
It was rather disturbing.
Now, this is the way the White House released it.
There are still photos of him.
It's obviously his voice.
It's not an actual video of him.
But this is where he's saying he's considering the forcible removal of a million and a half Gazans, Palestinians from Gaza, to Jordan and to Egypt.
Take a listen.
Cut number four.
I said, Joe, I'd love you to take on war.
Because I'm looking at the whole Gaza script right now and it's a mess.
It's a real mess.
You'd like Jordan to house people from Gaza?
I'd like him to take people.
I'd like Egypt to take people.
I'm talking to General Sisi tomorrow, sometime I believe.
And I'd like Egypt to take people and I'd like Jordan to take people.
You're talking about probably a million and a half people.
We just clean out that whole thing.
And I don't know.
Something has to happen.
But it's literally a demolition site right now.
Almost everything's demolished.
And people are dying there.
So I'd rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing at a different location where they can maybe live in peace.
Temporarily? It could be either.
It could be temporarily.
It could be long term.
Is he falling right into the hands of the right-wingers and Prime Minister Netanyahu's government?
He's just talking off the top of his head without even thinking it through.
And he's going to be in for a rude surprise when he gets General Sisi on the phone or King Abdullah and Jordan.
They're going to say, yeah, Donald, there are two ways that can happen.
There's no way, and there's no way in hell.
No, not going to happen.
People in the West, particularly in the United States, have come up with this as an idea.
I hear several critics of the Palestinians always say, well, one of those other Arabs, just take them.
This is their land.
This is their land for generations.
The reality is, That a lot of the people in Israel now, the Zionists, they're European.
They came out of Ukraine.
They came out of Russia.
They came out of Poland.
They don't have any historical tie, even though they claim, oh, you know, we controlled it for 3,500 years.
No, you didn't.
And that nonsense that we hear from people like Elise Stefanik and Mike Huckabee just has to stop.
And so here's Trump riffing off of that.
Well, what he ought to pay attention to, and I know that you talked about this earlier this morning with Aleister Crook, 1.5 million, at least 1 million Palestinians are walking on the road back home.
You know, it is, I see irony in this because today is the 80th anniversary, commemoration, Of the Russian liberation of Jews at Auschwitz.
This was the day Auschwitz was liberated, 80 years ago.
And then here, ironically, we see the Palestinians marching back into their devastated neighborhoods.
And yes, it's rubble, but they're going back because they would rather live there in the rubble because it's their home.
than be shipped off somewhere else to try to find where they might be made more comfortable.
This isn't about human comfort.
And that's, you know, that's one thing we need to wrap our brains around in the United States.
These people are not animals.
The president lifted the embargo on 2,000-pound bombs.
Why do the Israelis need 2,000-pound bombs?
To drop them on refugee tents?
Yeah, well, but what good did it do?
Here, you know, the, and again, not to repeat Alistair, but to repeat Alistair, because it's a very important point that he made, the visual images that came out when the four Israeli soldiers, the four women, were released, where they were surrounded by a phalanx of Hamas Al-Qassan Brigade fighters dressed In perfect uniforms and carrying new weapons.
Many of them looked to be Israeli weapons that they had captured.
And they weren't showing weakness.
They were showing presence.
And yet we thought Israel had destroyed them.
Israel hasn't destroyed them.
So that's the thing we have to recognize is that this is a viable, we may not like it in the West, but it's a viable Political organization, military organization, and Israel can't beat it.
They can kill more civilians if they want.
For what purpose?
And let me address, because some of the Israeli press was going off on, see, this shows Hamas.
They were using all these civilians as human shields, basically arguing that's why we've got to kill civilians.
Well, I come from ancestors who were civilians that fought British colonialists.
All right?
And just because they were some of the civilians, they gave the Brits rights to kill civilians.
No more so than it doesn't give the Zionists the right to murder women and children just because they say, we're trying to kill the Al-Qasim Brigade.
It didn't work.
So yeah, give them 2,000-pound bombs.
It doesn't...
Eliminate. Israel cannot kill its way to peace.
What has Netanyahu gained by this war?
He changed the Yahya Senwar to his brother or his cousin.
Yeah. I mean, that was a poignant and telling line that Netanyahu faces...
This is more than Netanyahu because...
Let's say Netanyahu dies tomorrow.
He's got prostate cancer reportedly, has some heart issues.
He goes away.
This does not change the fundamental policy that I think most of the Israelis embrace, which is to get rid of the Palestinians.
Now, they will argue over the way that is to be done.
But as far as the overall goal, eliminating them is right up there.
And then, as you played the clips last week of Elise Stefanik, in her conversations on the Hill, where she utters this nonsense that, oh yeah, the land of the West Bank,
that belongs to all these guys, these Jews from Ukraine!
Because God gave it to them 3,000 years ago!
You know, if you want to believe in nonsensical fantasies like that, fine, indulge yourself.
But that is just, it's absurd and intelligent.
People should not embrace such nonsense.
Is Trump in favor of genocide?
No, no.
Trump is, you know, Trump, you know, what we saw on the plane is...
He's like a jazz musician.
You know, he's just riffing off of the tune that's in his brain at the time.
But actually, when he sits down and thinks this through, because the other thing that he's doing right now, it's really unsettling the rabid Zionist supporters here in the United States, is sending Witkoff off to talk to the Iranians.
And reportedly, you know, we've made a lot about Miriam Adelson.
And, you know, her ties, alleged ties at least, with Mossad and the money that she reportedly gave to Donald Trump, anywhere from $50 million to $100 million, figuring that, you know, she would be one forcing Trump to,
you know, jump around like an organ grinder's monkey to do her bidding.
But in fact, she's been supporting Trump in this ceasefire effort.
And is actually opposing Netanyahu now, something that was unheard of maybe a year or two ago.
So I think there are things going on behind the scenes that don't fit into any of the neat little boxes.
And here's Trump talking about this on the plane, I don't think reflected a serious plan to follow through.
Well, your optimism is refreshing, Larry.
Let's switch to...
The things he says and has been saying off the top of his tongue about Russia.
That the Russians have lost a million troops in Ukraine.
I mean, that is really preposterous.
Well, but let's be clear.
Trump is not saying that because that's what Trump has thought or believes.
That is what Donald Trump has been told by the intelligence community.
The intelligence community is lying to Donald Trump.
This is nothing that Trump and his advisors came up with.
And we got concrete proof of that more than a week ago when David Ignatius interviewing and writing this puff piece on Bill Burns, the Biden's CIA director.
It was Bill Burns talking about the 700,000 casualties that the Russians are suffering.
So Trump's been getting CIA briefings for at least two or three months, and in the course of that time, I guarantee you, nobody's come out and said, hey, Mr. President, the reality is Russia's only suffered, maybe killed in action,
120,000 max.
Yeah, they've had some wounded soldiers as well, maybe another 300,000, but...
It's not creating political pressure on Vladimir Putin at all.
None. And the economy is solid.
That's not what they've been telling him.
They've been telling him the exact opposite.
So now Trump is repeating that.
And being filled with those false assumptions, it'd be natural for Trump to say, oh man, if Putin's taking that kind of beating, both in terms of loss of troops and the economy, Yeah, he'll jump at a deal.
I'm going to force his hand.
These CIA people who I guess are in an interregnum between Bill Burns and John Radcliffe are making the president look ridiculous.
Is this going to improve?
I know it'll improve under Gabbard if she's confirmed, Tulsi Gabbard, but will it improve under John Radcliffe or is he cut from the same cloth?
Well, it depends.
You know, I understand the people doing this are...
What Ray McGovern did back in his day.
But unlike Ray, they're dishonest.
Unlike Ray, they're shading the truth.
And in fact, this New York Times article that came out with...
It wasn't a New York Times article.
It was an ABC News piece.
But they came out together and noted that the intelligence community...
Is not reporting the real truth about Ukrainian losses.
Because it would be...
It would hurt morale.
Learning the truth about the massive gargantuan losses Ukraine is suffering would hurt morale.
Well, we can't have that.
Here's Trump talking about...
A million Russians killed.
This is the day after he was inaugurated.
This is last Tuesday, January 21st.
Chris? President Zelensky would like to have peace.
He's told me that very strongly.
He'd like to have peace.
But it takes two to tango.
We'll see what happens.
Any time they want, I'll meet.
I'd like to see that end.
Millions of people are being killed.
And they're being killed.
It's a vicious situation.
And they're now largely...
Soldiers. A lot of people have been killed in the cities.
They look like demolition sites.
The thing with Ukraine is that many more people died than you're reporting.
You're not reporting the real numbers.
And I'm not blaming you for that.
I'm blaming maybe our government for not wanting to release those numbers.
Many more people died than what you know about.
Yeah. I mean, he's just reflecting what he's being told in these briefings.
Right. You know, having done briefings, So I never briefed the president.
I did brief Vice President Quayle.
And I always saw my job as telling the truth as I understood it and to make sure I had as many sources as possible.
I wasn't there to spin it.
I wasn't there to try to tell him what he wanted to hear.
My job was to be the Dutch uncle, to bring unpleasant truths if necessary.
And unfortunately, under Avril Haines, the former director of national intelligence, this was the prevarication seemed to be the primary objective.
I don't know how these people can live with themselves.
As a result of all their prevarications, human beings died.
They don't care.
It's not their family.
I mean, they're miles away.
They don't smell the stench of death, the burning flesh.
They don't see the rotting corpses.
No, man, they commute from their homes in either northern Virginia or Maryland.
You know, I used to drive across the bridge and get on the George W. Washington Parkway, and then, you know, a few minutes down, you hop off and get into the CIA headquarters.
You sit in a nice office.
Or maybe they're at the offices at the DNI out at Tyson's Corner.
But wherever they are in that office, they are hermetically sealed off from the reality of the human suffering that they're causing.
And all they know is, don't rock the boat.
Because if you rock the boat, then you're not going to get promoted.
If you rock the boat, you're going to create unrest.
And we've got a lot invested in this covert action.
The CIA is up to its eyebrows, and this is one of the real dangers that come when you intermingle analysts with operators.
Because when operators get committed to a covert action like the Ukraine project, then the pressure is put on the analysts to not say or write anything that would undermine support for that effort.
Even if that effort's going awry, if it's crashing and burning, don't say anything to rock the boat.
What do you think Trump will say to Putin when they meet?
Surely he's not going to threaten him.
No, no, he won't threaten Putin.
And if he did, it'd be foolish.
You know, Trump, I think, he's got this public persona.
You know, the Donald Trump from The Apprentice, you know, the bombast, the bellicosity, etc., you know, it's an act.
But people that have actually dealing with him on one-on-one, the recording is actually very, very generous, very kind, and actually pays attention to people.
So, you know, he's going to try to build rapport with Putin.
He wants to be liked by Putin.
He doesn't want to be disliked by Putin.
Has the spigot been turned off for Ukraine?
Do we know that?
Financial assistance side in terms of economic aid, aid going to non-governmental organizations.
Yeah, that reportedly has been turned off, not just for Ukraine, but for everybody except Israel and Egypt.
So that lets Zelensky know where they stand.
Reportedly, the military equipment and ammunition, vehicles, such, that's still in the pipeline.
But, you know, that brings up the other problem.
So what?
It gets there.
Who's going to use it?
Ukraine has a severe manpower shortage, and it's not getting better.
And in fact, General Siersky, the head of the Ukrainian military, for now anyway, admitted as much last week that, yeah, they may be recruiting 20,000 people a month, but they're losing 40,000.
Larry, how can Trump justify continuing to keep the spigot open after all he said?
About Biden's recklessness during the campaign.
Yeah, well, he shouldn't.
He would be well advised to immediately pull the plug across the board.
And maybe he's doing that indirectly.
Again, we can't always take at face value what we're seeing in public because he also does some surprising things behind the scenes.
As we saw with the ceasefire.
You know, pushing that ceasefire forward in Israel.
He was a critical difference in that, and it's really sort of upended the Netanyahu government.
So I think you could see a similar thing at work with respect to Ukraine.
Regardless of what Trump does, it's not going to change what Russia is doing and will do in the coming weeks.
Even over the weekend, Four key cities have fallen, including or are on the verge of collapse.
Chazofyar, Toretsk, Pagrovsk, Pagrovsk being three of the principal ones.
So it is, and then there's Novoselica, that fell.
And these are all important logistic hubs.
So as they collapse, The ability of the Ukrainians to keep the Russians from the Dnieper River will have evaporated.
Larry, I like the way you're pronouncing these cities' names.
You're starting to sound like McGovern.
That's one of the benefits of hanging out with Ray.
Thank you for your time, my dear friend.
I trust you'll hang out with us again at 4.30 on Friday afternoon.
I'll be there.
All right.
All the best.
Thank you, Larry.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
Very helpful.
Very, very informative.
Coming up at 1 o'clock this afternoon, Ben Cohen of Ben& Jerry's Ice Cream, a warrior for peace his entire adult life.
And at 4 o'clock this afternoon, Scott Ritter, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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